6 self-serve advertising tips for small businesses

Advertising on Spotify isn’t just for large enterprise brands with deep pockets. Spotify Ads Manager makes audio and video advertising accessible to businesses of just about any size and scale.

This accessibility comes with access to a highly receptive audience: Our engaged users make music and podcasts the soundtrack of their lives— and they're more open to hearing from advertisers than you might think. Our Sonic Science research revealed that one in five study participants had looked up a brand or product online after hearing about it in a Spotify ad.¹

What's more, small business owners can use our self-serve advertising platform to quickly and easily set a budget, determine targeting parameters, and launch creative assets—selecting exactly what works best for them.

Here are seven self-serve advertising tips for small businesses—so you can make the most of your digital audio and video campaigns on Spotify, and grab your audience's attention when and where it matters most.

1. Set your budget

Self-serve advertising platforms like Ads Manager have flexible pricing options, so you can bring your small business advertising ideas to life with any budget, starting at just $250.

First off, decide on a budget that best suits your advertising goals, whether you’re focused on building brand awareness through upper funnel objectives or increasing consideration through lower-funnel tactics.

With Ads Manager, you can select a lifetime budget amount to spend through the entire length of your campaign, or opt for a daily budget with open ad set dates to get increased transparency and predictability —and more room to experiment between ad sets. You may want to shift budgets, test different audiences and creatives, or take action based on past learnings. With a daily budget, you can set a target daily spend amount, which Spotify uses to determine your monthly spending limit. That means you can capture daily fluctuations in demand while at the same time staying within your monthly budget.

Either way, you’ll have complete control over how your budget is spent based on your campaign goals, and decide the maximum price you pay with a bid cap. You can also adjust your budget as needed based on customer demand and audience targeting criteria.

2. Choose the right ad format

Spotify ads come in a range of engaging formats designed to keep customers listening wherever they are. Within Ads Manager, small businesses can choose from formats including:

Audio ads

Audio ads are served between songs on music playlists, as well as during podcast series and episodes. They can be heard across a range of devices, helping your message land with your audience at precisely the right moment.

Podcast ads are available to advertisers worldwide, and can only be selected alongside music ads for an Ads Manager campaign.

Writing an audio ad script that will get people’s attention starts with context. Keep your audio ad script casual and conversational with well timed pauses so it fits seamlessly into the listener's experience.

Video ads

Video ads are served to users when we know the app is in focus, either with the sound on (between songs), or muted (during songs) as an opt in video ad. Either way, users will always be interacting with their device when a video ad is served.

3. Leverage machine learning to help you achieve your goals

With Ads Manager, you can select Automatic Placement to leverage machine learning that determines where your audio or video ads will appear across music and podcasts—to help you optimize delivery and achieve your advertising objective.

By selecting a specific campaign objective and Automatic Placement in Ads Manager, you’re more likely to get your message heard by the right audience—whether they’re listening to music or podcasts.

There are five different objectives to choose from when creating a campaign in Ads Manager. Each one helps you reach a different outcome based on the goal you want to achieve.

Build awareness

4. Consider brand safety

Brand safety is top of mind among advertisers as new threats and technologies emerge almost daily.² That's why it's important to choose a self-serve ad platform that takes brand safety seriously—and gives you control over how and where your ads are served.

On Ads Manager, advertisers can choose the types of ads they run and the formats in which they're delivered. With built-in content controls, you can also exclude certain topics and content categories from your audience targeting, keeping Spotify a safe space for your brand and audiences.

5. Measure your results

A key advertising tip for small business owners: Measure campaign performance and gather actionable insights to ensure you're staying on track toward your advertising goals.

Ads Manager's suite of measurement solutions offers real-time reporting, campaign summaries, and budget tracking. You can also keep an eye on metrics like:

• Ads served
• Reach
• Frequency
• Completion rate
• Clicks
• Demographics
• Conversions

With this data at your fingertips, you can better understand what your listeners are responding to, who's tuning into your ads, and how you can adjust your self-serve campaign strategies to increase awareness and consideration.

6. Test and optimize for future success

Advertising solutions for small businesses go beyond a single campaign. That’s why Spotify gives the advertiser total control. Since you call the shots, you have the freedom and flexibility to tweak campaigns, apply real-time insights, and experiment with new ideas as you wish.

Not sure which audiences to target? Test a few different options and see which delivers the best results. Can’t decide which ad format to use? Dedicate a small budget to both audio and video ads and let the data steer you in the right direction.

Ads Manager makes it simple to manage multiple campaigns and budgets so you can optimize for future success and hit just the right note with your targeted online advertising.